Twitterati is a very popular term in blogosphere and in social networks that is used as a reference to Twitter influencer. So Twitterati is obviously a very influent Twitter user.
But I couldn’t find any agreed-upon criteria that could be used to define Twitterati.
Sure, you can find the section called Twitterati on alltop.com. But this is just an opinion of a popular online resource, not a set-in-stone rule.
I’m not sure about the origin of this world. But even if one can assume that this term originated at alltop.com, it obviously over-grown the barriers of any particular site and became a noun in English language, just like “Google”.
Google is not a company name anymore. The meaning of this word serves as a general representation of search engines per se (sorry, Microsoft), and is deeply interwoven in different layers of American culture.
The same thing is happeing with the term Twitterati.
Everybody sort of understands the meaning of this word yet it remains amazingly vague.
So, what criteria could be used to define this elusive term?
Number of Twitter followers?
Not the most accurate criterion but one can observe that all Twitteratties have over 50,000 followers. (I would say over 100,000 followers, but it’s not true since many of them have following in a range of 70,000 to 100,000).
Number of Retweets? That’s a dark alley since this number can be easily played.
What else then? The popularity of their blogs?
May be, but it’s not directly related to Twitter and hence to the term Twitterati…
So what could be a definition of Twitterati?
Your thoughts?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
@professordaddyo 04.13.10 at 9:57 pm
I’d say the term would refer to Twitter giants e.g. Scoble, Solis, etc. Not that newcomers cannot achieve such a moniker, but it would take some hard work. I plan to be in that group soon, good post BTW.
webnews 04.15.10 at 12:31 pm
yes, but what is a “twitter giant”? How many followers such individual should have? What could be other factors to define his/her position as a Twiterati?